Products liability doctrine holds a manufacturer, or other party involved in selling a product, strictly liable when an article, placed into the market with knowledge that it is to be used without inspection for defects, proves to have a defect that causes a personal injury. Consumers who are injured because of a fault with a product that the consumers had no ability to protect themselves against may recover against the manufacturer under a theory of products liability.
Germanton is an unincorporated community in Forsyth and Stokes counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina, primarily in Stokes County. It is located approximately ten miles south-southwest of the Stokes County seat of Danbury, on North Carolina State Highway 65 at an altitude of 662 feet. Germanton was the county seat of Stokes County prior to Forsyth County being created from southern Stokes. Germanton was then centrally located in the middle of Stokes. Germanton was established in 1790 and is the oldest settlement in Stokes County. The town's 23 original acres were part of a 700-acre (2.8 km) tract that was granted to Jacob Lash by the Earl of Granville in 1762. American Revolutionary War Major Joseph Winston and later U.S. Congressman was a famous Germanton resident with a plantation nearby. Coal was mined in the Germanton area but was of low quality.